Depending upon which side of the fence you are sitting, the nuclear renaissance is either in full blossom or an arid landscape. The new uranium miners – Paladin Resources, UrAsia and SXR Uranium One – celebrate the record spot and long-term uranium price. Exelon Corp Chief Executive John Rowe is less sanguine, based upon comments he made this past Friday, “The government may have fooled me on 17 reactors that I currently run, but I’m the one who’s being foolish if I build a new plant without knowing what they’re going to do with the spent fuel.” Exelon is the largest owner of nuclear power plants in the United States.In a September 19th article, we interviewed Steven Kraft, Nuclear Energy Institute Director for Used Fuel Management. Mr. Kraft hinted the stalls around the nuclear renaissance in the United States would revolve around the spent fuel depository issue. What happens with the 40,000 metric tons of used nuclear reactor fuel? Right now, they are chilling out in 141 concrete cooling ponds scattered around the country.For the past quarter century, the nuclear industry expected the reactor fuel would end up in a centralized depository, as has been proposed at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Thanks to U.S. Senator Reid, and his efforts to squash this site, the Department of Energy has been paralyzed in moving forward. Alternatives are now being proposed, and the U.S. part of the nuclear renaissance remains stalled.Then the other shoe drops. Because of the vociferous environmental lobbyists, pre-construction costs dissuade nuclear utilities from accelerating their plans to build new nuclear reactors in the United States. Utilities do what is convenient – they pass on these licensing costs to their utility consumers. Because of the environmental lobby, Georgia electricity consumers are paying the freight to license the new nuclear reactors proposed by Atlanta-based Southern Co. Charlotte-based Duke Energy hopes to get the same deal in North Carolina.How much does it cost to license a nuclear power plant? Standard & Poors analyst Dimitri Nikas estimated the permits to construct a nuclear plant would cost between $1.5 billion and $2 billion. This means roughly one-half the cost of constructing a nuclear plant in the United States goes to pay for a permit to build and operate the reactor.Because of this expensive proposition, nuclear energy costs more to produce electricity in the United States than it would in places like China, Korea, Japan or just about anywhere else. For a nuclear plant costing $2 million per megawatt to build, the power plant’s electricity would cost $55 per megawatt hour. By comparison, a coal-fired power plant costs consumers $53 per megawatt hour for their electricity. A combined cycle integrated gasification plant fueled by coal produces electricity for $50 per megawatt hour.On the bright side, the S&P analyst believes that after the first wave of nuclear power plant construction, overall costs could plunge to $1.5 million per megawatt hour for electricity, or roughly $44 per megawatt hour. Because of this drop Mr. Niklas concluded nuclear energy “is by far the most competitive cost from any resource, except perhaps hydroelectricity generation.” This is more good news for uranium miners now supplying the nuclear industry and those who hope to do so over the next decade.